Battle of Shib Koh

The Battle of Shib Koh was a battle of the Afghanistan War which was fought on 12 December 2018. Afghan forces abandoned the remote Shib Koh district, leaving the district in Taliban hands after the government forces failed to break the Taliban's siege of the district.

The district, which was located on the Iranian border, was under Taliban siege for months, and it was held by dozens of Afghan government soldiers. Since the beginning of 2018, dozens of well-armed elite Afghan special forces soldiers were killed in the intense fighting for the sparsely-populated Farah Province. Iran was accused of providing the insurgents with money, modern weapons, and explosives in an attempt to extend its influence into western Afghanistan. The Taliban sought to capture Shib Koh due to its location along a poppy-smuggling route. The US advised the Afghans to concentrate their forces in the case of a battle with the Taliban, so the Afghans decided to withdraw their trucks and ammunition to the capital of Farah, abandoning Shib Koh to the Taliban.